Paul Murray: Mark McGowan’s departure will mean an ordinary government will be able to be seen more clearly

We really shouldn’t ignore things right under our noses.

West Australians have just had imposed on them a new Premier who wasn’t even wanted by his own Labor faction, those colleagues who would surely best know him and his abilities.

And the reason we copped Roger Cook is because the previously dominant faction’s first choice, Amber-Jade Sanderson, was blocked by the rest of the party factions who preferred almost anyone else.

To compound these iniquities, the most capable of the three contenders, Rita Saffioti, was never seriously considered for the top job because she not in any faction.

Further adding to the curious nature of this process is that it was directed by unelected union bosses, representing less than 10 per cent of the workforce, who run the factions and brokered the deals.

Yes. Nothing to see here. All perfectly normal.

And the fundamental reason for this peculiar turn of events? Mark McGowan reneged on the undertaking to serve a full term because he is now “exhausted”.

As recently as March 20, in an interview to celebrate six years in power, McGowan said that after struggling during the pandemic, he was getting seven hours sleep a night and would be around for the next election in 2025.

“Premier Mark McGowan himself seems up to the task, confirming he would lead the party in two years’ time and ‘expects’ to serve the full term,” reported WA Today.

“If running the State for this long, including two years through a pandemic, has wearied McGowan at all, he is hiding it well.”

So what has happened since then? Where’s all that exhaustion come from with the pandemic in the past?

Or was he just bored? Maybe playing computer games at his desk in the afternoons? I guess we’ll never know for sure unless insiders start talking.

Anyway, the king is dead. And WA’s political landscape is dramatically different as a result.

All the protections afforded Labor by McGowan’s extraordinary popularity now vanish and this ordinary government will be able to be seen more clearly for what it really is.

West Australians put all their eggs in one basket when they gave Labor its wipe-out election victory two years ago.

They put their trust in Mark McGowan, many of them people who had never voted Labor before.

Now that McGowan has walked away from them, they will get to see what that basket actually looks like.

McGowan had no factional alignment, but his politics were certainly those of a moderate, even in terms of Labor’s Right, from which the party has traditionally chosen leaders throughout Australia, with only a few notable exceptions like Daniel Andrews and Anthony Albanese.

Even Gough Whitlam was from the Right when given the Labor leadership, before embarking on his leftist adventurism as prime minister.

Behind McGowan’s massive victory is the most left-wing government in WA history, previously held in check only by the force of his personal authority.

The Banksia Hill crisis is emblematic of this. McGowan was able to maintain a line that was highly unpopular with his “progressive” backbench because of the public support he had amassed.

The 2021 election loaded the Labor caucus with an overwhelming number of Left faction MPs who want their social agenda enacted. McGowan doesn’t stand in their way any more.

Roger Cook is the first Labor Left Premier WA has ever had.

Let that sink in for a while. There’s a good reason for that historical fact. Even the Labor Party wouldn’t trust the Left with the top job previously.

The Left owned McGowan to the extent that he relied on them for numerical support in Labor’s factional system. Even premiers are only one ballot away from the backbench when the factions decide it’s time.

But he was not from the Left and therefore not bound by its factional demands. Cook, however, is a creature of the factions and remains a member of the most radical Left union, the United Workers Union.

Without McGowan, Labor in WA will be much more inclined to follow the path determined by its caucus.

The UWU’s 17-11 vote for the hard-Left Amber-Jade Sanderson shows the extent of its frustration with the moderate line taken by McGowan. She was going to be their standard-bearer into a period of far more “progressive” government.

That ambition thwarted, there will now be substantial pressure on Cook to enact Left policies in the remaining time before the next election.

There was plenty of tension already between the Left factions before the split on Tuesday that gave Cook the leadership. The non-UWU unions like the metalworkers and the wharfies are far more blue-collar in their concerns than the urban “progressives” formerly known as the Missos.

Sanderson emerged from the UWU meeting with a statement that got the factional rabbits running: “I’ve been chosen with a clear majority to be the candidate to go forward for the leadership.”

What that “clear majority” meant was that if the UWU’s 28 votes held together as a bloc, Sanderson had a pathway to become Premier.

At a meeting on Tuesday afternoon involving metalworkers’ head Steve McCartney and UWU boss Carolyn Smith it became clear that the Missos vote was not solid.

The iron-fist discipline of the UWU broke. Given that the Right wouldn’t have a bar of Sanderson, that then gave Cook a pathway if the rest of the Left didn’t fragment. It held tight and Smith folded.

Tensions were not helped by stories swirling that the UWU leadership had been pronouncing: “These white men must not win.”

“Multiple Labor figures described Tuesday’s leadership machinations as a direct rebuke to UWU — and long-time union heavyweight Carolyn Smith in particular — after years of wielding extraordinary control over the running of the party,” The West reported later.

Cook will now have to deal daily with this fracturing of the Left which has been a long time in the making. It won’t be easy.

As you would have heard and read many times in the media this week, Cook is a nice guy. And that’s because he never upsets anyone, unlike McGowan.

That’s going to be a problem in a job where saying No is important. He’s also a media darling, but that’s not governing.

One of the biggest issues for that group pushing Cook’s candidacy solely because it was the only way they could block Sanderson, was they feared his natural proclivities would be to fold when the pressure came on.

This was exacerbated by his shaky appearance on 6PR Radio that morning, especially when host Gary Adshead confronted him with the fact that he is central to a Corruption and Crime Commission investigation.

When Cook responded he had no knowledge of the inquiry, Adshead stood him up. Adshead said he must have known because he had written a number of columns outlining Cook’s role in it — he had even asked him for comment.

“The CCC is also running a separate investigation into claims by a former employee of deputy premier Roger Cook that Labor Party donors received preferential treatment when applying for G2G travel passes during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Adshead wrote on November 22 last year.

“Sanja Spasojevic claims she was unfairly dismissed by Cook and that case is currently being heard in the Industrial Relations Commission. She has previously said that electorate office staff were routinely instructed to carry out Labor Party campaign work while being paid by taxpayers.”

So having installed Cook, Labor will now have to wait on CCC head John McKechnie to see if that probe damages the new Premier — unless they already know the outcome.

One thing that has been jarringly missing in analysis of Cook’s ascension is any detailed examination of his failure as health minister, the biggest job he has held.

Cook became the unconvincing face of the government’s shame over the death of Aishwarya Aswarth at Perth Children’s Hospital.

Ambulance ramping grew exponentially under his watch, after he had claimed it was a “crisis” when in Opposition.

He had three years before the pandemic to fix the chronic staffing shortages that crippled the health system. The rorting in the North Metropolitan Health Service happened under the control of a Labor-stacked board he engineered.

History shows McGowan removed Cook from health and didn’t think he was up to the job of Treasurer, taking the role himself, maybe overloading his work limits.

No amount of spin put on the former PR man by his PR mates will change those facts.

Saffioti will now get Treasury, from whence she came before entering Parliament, and the job of handling the financial mess of her way-overdue and well over-budget Metronet project.

The obvious conflicts mean she should not be allowed to continue in the Transport role, which she may be angling to keep.

McGowan’s departure will spark a reshuffle, but Cook won’t have the authority to clean out the dead wood.

Buckle in. This will be a bumpy ride.